For My Children’s Children – My Father’s Brisket

From time to time I get asked why I bother with this food blog. It takes me hours each week; I don’t have a particularly large audience; I’m not getting any monetary rewards. Sometimes it doesn’t seem to make sense.

I enjoy writing for friends and family and using this blog as a means for sharing my recipes, so those who are inspired can prepare these dishes on their own. Most people who subscribe to my blog are family and friends and friends of family and friends, and their feedback has been motivational enough for me to keep going.

However, one of the biggest reasons I record my culinary creations is for my children and my children’s children yet to come.

An initial inspiration, perhaps not for the blog itself, but for cataloging the food I cook, was a friend and former colleague of my wife’s who prepared a simple, spiral-bound family cookbook for her children as they fledged the nest. I thought it was a wonderful way of preserving family recipes and tradition, ensuring memories for future generations. A perfect gift.

From time to time I wander into my dusty basement to search through the box containing my grandmother’s recipes. It’s a funny mix of traditional Jewish dishes on food-stained index cards and recipes of Americana, clipped from newspapers from the 1950’s, 60’s, and 70’s that she might or might not have prepared. They are disorganized and can be frustrating. Some you can’t read because the ink has faded among the grease stains and in others, the measurements aren’t exactly helpful. “Use a glass of oil and four glasses of flour” to make knish and strudel dough, for example. In other cases, the recipes have been lost; the filling for rice strudel and liver knishes (yes, liver knishes, and they were pretty good), may be lost forever. I wish before her passing I had learned to cook from her or at least that the recipes had been catalogued and organized.

It is important for me to record my recipes because I want my children to have them, even if they’re not ready to cook them all now. I want them to be able to make them for their children and to pass them on well into the future. These are memories of food that I cherish, and I want them to last long after I have moved on.

Do I dream of becoming a popular food blogger making at least a little money doing what I love? Sure. With every post there’s that tiny glimmer of hope that a story or recipe will go viral and my culinary popularity will soar. But in reality, I don’t think that’s what I really want at all. I’m happy every time one of my kids calls up to say they made a recipe that I posted on my blog and that it was delicious. I’m happy to pass on these recipes and traditions. I do it for my children and for my children’s children.

My Father’s Brisket

The perfect recipe to exemplify traditions and the importance of passing recipes along from generation to generation is my father’s brisket. My father has been making brisket as long as I can remember, and I recently learned it was my mother – who did relatively little of the cooking when I was growing up – who showed him how to make it. I’m sure her mother cooked it long before her. But I can’t imagine my grandmother used the same recipe, with its seared meat and browned, almost burnt onions and garlic, creating a rich gravy. As good a cook as she was, she probably made her brisket with Lipton’s onion soup as flavoring.

In the market, briskets come in all sizes. You can buy a whole brisket, in which case you need to remove a significant amount of fat and break it down into the flat and point portions. The flat cut is more lean, the point significantly more fatty. It may be easier to simply purchase the flat portion, leaving the ¼-inch fat cap for flavor. Just make sure you buy a raw brisket – not a brined or “corned” one used to make corned beef, as a family friend once did – lest it be unbearably tough and salty, and completely unpalatable. Since pieces of brisket are different sizes, I have scaled this recipe for each pound of meat.

Each pound of meat is about 2 servings, 3½ hours, including 3 hours largely unattended

4 Tbsp. vegetable oil, more if needed

Flat cut brisket cut into approximately 4 by 4-inch pieces

For each pound of brisket:

1 large onion, chopped

1 clove garlic, roughly chopped

½ tsp. kosher salt

1. Heat 2 Tbsp. vegetable oil over a medium-high heat in a heavy bottom pot or Dutch oven with a tight fitting lid, large enough to easily hold all the meat. Add the onions and garlic and cook until golden in color, but not crisp or burnt, about 15 minutes, adjusting heat as necessary. Remove to a bowl and reserve.
2. Cut brisket into roughly 4 by 4-inch pieces. Add 2 Tbsp. oil to the pot and heat over medium-high heat. Add several pieces of brisket and sear and brown on all sides, about 2 minutes per side, adjusting heat as needed. Remove to a bowl and reserve. If needed, add more oil. Continue searing until the remainder of the brisket is browned on all sides. You do not want to crowd the pot, as the brisket will steam rather than sear. (I have also browned the meat on a grill with perfectly acceptable results.)
3. Lower the heat to medium-low and deglaze the pan by adding about a half cup warm water at a time and scraping up the flavorful browned bits with a wooden spoon.
4. Return the brisket, onions and garlic, and any juices to the pot and add water until the meat is just covered (about 5 cups for 6 pounds of brisket). Add salt.
5. Bring to a boil, cover, lower heat, and simmer for about 2½ to 3 hours, stirring occasionally.
6. When done, allow to cool and then place in the refrigerator overnight. Scrape off congealed fat from surface of meat and discard. Remove each piece of brisket and slice against the grain into ¼-inch thick slices. Return to the pot of gravy and reheat before serving.
7. Sliced brisket and gravy can be frozen until ready to defrost, reheat, and serve.

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